Posted on 09/03/2002 1:45:33 PM PDT by GaryMontana
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac will urge world leaders to launch talks on a new international tax to fight world poverty, sources with him at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg say.
The sources said Chirac rejected the existing "Tobin Tax" proposal to raise levies purely on foreign exchange transactions but would call in a speech to the summit for discussion on a wider tax on wealth generated by globalisation.
"It could be a tax on airplane tickets, on carbon dioxide, on health products sold in industrialised countries, and indeed on international financial transactions," one source said.
"The idea of wanting to hold back a small share (of global wealth) to relieve poverty is not a mad idea at all. But the debate has been polluted by the campaign on the Tobin Tax," the same source added.
The Tobin Tax, championed by non-governmental groups as a way both to raise funds and to deter financial speculation, attracted much interest particularly in Europe last year but since appears to have fallen out of favour.
European officials have noted possible problems with the tax, proposed by U.S. Nobel Prize winner James Tobin in the 1970s. One is that financial markets would simply move to those countries that chose not to apply the tax.
World leaders began arriving at the World Summit on Sustainable Development on Monday hoping to settle differences over an action plan to end what South African President Thabo Mbeki called "global apartheid" between rich and poor.
The sources close to Chirac, who was due to speak in Johannesburg around midday local time (11 a.m. British time) on Monday, pointed to studies suggesting global development aid would have to be doubled to around $100 billion (64 billion pounds) to really fight poverty.
Intentional circular-reasoning.
I love it! ;-)
What do you think the Kyoto Treaty is about? Countries that don't have to abide yet have "CO2 credits" which they will sell to countries who need them (read the U.S.)
It's just another redistribution of our wealth to other countries.
The thing that really chaps my hide is that countries like China get a pass on Kyoto (look it up)
Nah. I've met some French folks who actually bathed. Never met any French who won a war.
Levied by whom? There are, after all, no carbon dioxide meters distributed worldwide...my guess is that it would be levied according to some environmentalist's estimate, and would be targeted at Guess Who. They're gonna ram the Kyoto Extortion Protocols through by any means necessary...
I wonder how much tax they would levy on Cameroon? After all the "environmentalist" scientists are venting from Lake Nyos over 300 million cubic meters of carbon dioxide and over 10 million cubic meters of CO2 from Lake Monoun. I guess there is no hysteria about "greenhouse gasses" as applied to CO2 coming from a poor third world country.
Yer blowin' my stereotypin', man. ;-)
Freedom will be a fond memory if these leftist perverted socialist crooks are not stopped cold.
647 grains at a time.
There are more than a few Americans who share your sentiments.
Nice pic, BTW.
you guys crazy? what if we win?(like there's some question). we'll never be rid of 'em.
This world government is giving itself rights and proselytizing before it even applologize for its own existence as the founding fathers did , under G_d.
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